Food Hackathon looks to the future of food technology, colorful food searches and more

The Chronicle’s Valerie Demicheva reports from the food technology front:

Earlier this month, developers, bloggers and all kinds of food lovers banded together for two straight days (and nights) at 450 Townsend for the Food Hackathon. Created by Matt Wise, Tim West and Wayne Sutton, three of the cofounders of Cosemble, and blogger Michelle Paratore, the Food Hackathon resulted in 26 pitches made by the 170 participants for a chance to win $25,000 in prizes — and gain some clout.

The initial creator, Matt Wise, explained the goal as “to harness intellectual and creative capital to focus on innovative ways to solve problems that affect the entire food ecosystem.” He noted that there has always been an inextricable relationship between food and technology. Last year alone, venture capitalists invested $350 million in food and tech, with deal growth at 37% year over year.

We emailed with Wise to get a better understanding of the Food Hackathon — and where he thinks food technology is heading.

VD: For the non-technical folks, how exactly does a Food Hackathon work?

MW: A hackathon is an event in which computer programmers, designers, and others in the field of software development, as well as graphic designers, interface designers and project managers collaborate intensively on software projects. Occasionally, there is a hardware component as well. Hackathons typically last between a day and a week in length. Some hackathons are intended simply for educational or social purposes, although in many cases the goal is to create usable software. Hackathons often have a specific focus, which can include the programming language used, the operating system, an application, an API, the subject and the demographic group of the programmers. In other cases, there is no restriction on the type of software being created. Food Hackathon had no restrictions, except that participants had to focus their efforts on building hardware or software products, and services that would positively impact any aspect of the food ecosystem.

How many people participated?

We had more than 250 people participate at Food Hackathon. This includes 170 participants who booked tickets, our audience, mentors, judges, hosts, and members of the press.

What does it take to get this event launched?

You have to have a great vision for understanding how to bring people and organizations together to focus on a common goal by aligning interests and creating value for all the stakeholders. Launching a successful event requires having a talented and passionate core team, dedicated volunteers, and generous sponsors. You also need sufficient time to package the event so you can launch it on schedule and build up to a climax at the close of the event.

The contest for best overall food innovation hack went to Vibrantly, a team that built an iPhone app that lets users search for foods based on their color. Feeling like something green? The Vibrantly app can show you healthy food options ranging from kale stew to basil pesto to guacamole. “By focusing on color we stimulate your right brain and motivate behavior change,” said Stephanie, Quilao, Vibrantly’s team leader. The color of food often indicates the health, vitamin, and nutrition content in food. Creating an app that enables users to visually identify healthy food is a great way to leverage mobile technology to empower consumers to make healthier eating choices. The Vibrantly team is exploring the opportunity to build upon their concept and create a real company.

What about the other pitches? Are those projects going anywhere?

Tiny Farms (winner, “Best Hardware and Food Hack” prize): This startup wants to bring large-scale mechanization to the cultivation of edible insects. In countries where bugs are a big part of people’s diet—Thailand, for example—methods for collecting and sorting insects are still rudimentary and labor-intensive. Tiny Farms founder Daniel Imrie-Situnayake said his team spent the weekend building prototype machines that use air flow to help sort mealworms from the meal in which they live. “With the food pressure the world is under, there needs to be infrastructure for this cottage industry that industrializes it,” Imrie-Situnayake said. “There are people whose entire lives depend on this growing market for edible insects, and there are some problems we can address easily in a weekend that could change those lives.”

GardenBnB (winner, “Social Good” prize): Drawing inspiration from Airbnb, this team came up with an idea for connecting would-be gardeners with unused garden space or under-picked fruit trees. The service lets users book times to visit neighbor’s gardens or trees, or book a visit by a “Gardenmobile” – a flatbed truck carrying a miniature garden. “We bring the farm to you,” said team leader Leslie Wu.

Touchless Ticket (winner, “LeapMotion Challenge” prize): This team came up with a clever way to reduce the mess and confusion inherent in paper-based order tracking systems in restaurant kitchens. The team’s prototype, built around a Leap Motion motion-control sensor and a set of computer monitors, is designed to let “expediters” in restaurant kitchens assign orders to specific chefs, then alert wait staff when a meal is ready – all through gesture control, without having to touch a screen or a slip of paper.

Slim Menu (winner, “Best Technology” prize): This team showed off a smartphone app that helps restaurant-goers figure out what to order by showing them pictures of the food on the menu. Optical character recognition software translates menu text into a Web image search, then shows pictures of dishes grabbed from the Internet or from the restaurant’s website.

What’s next for Food Hackathon?

We’re planning another Food Hackathon to unite food lovers, entrepreneurs, designers, and developers. We’re keeping our launch date under wraps, but it will happen within the next six months, probably sooner. We’ve had interest from agencies, governments, food companies, investors, universities, and technology companies. We’ve hit a chord that really resonates with a larger demographic and we want to harness our goodwill and event platform to create value for people, organizations, and communities that care about food and technology.